


Untimely Confessions of Love and Other Things - A Hunter's Realization in 5 Parts

by lemonsorbae



Category: Supernatural
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Love Confessions, M/M, Oblivious Castiel, Pining Dean, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 11:31:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3445520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonsorbae/pseuds/lemonsorbae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re dangling off his tongue again, those three little words; the three most terrifying words in the entire English language. It’s getting harder and harder to hang on to them, to keep them imprisoned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untimely Confessions of Love and Other Things - A Hunter's Realization in 5 Parts

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posted from [tumblr](http://herowords.tumblr.com/post/112208874706/untimely-confessions-of-love-and-other-things-a).

**Part 1:**

Cas is wearing bumblebee socks. Honest to God socks with bees on them. So what if he’s a grown man. So what if he used to smite demons with just the palm of his hand. So what. He’s wearing bee socks. 

And he looks adorable as fuck. 

And there are words on the tip of Dean’s tongue, rolling around like salt in the sea, waiting to be washed ashore. 

"Hey, Cas." He finds himself saying. 

"Yes?" Castiel looks at Dean over his coffee cup, his hair sleep mussed and his t-shirt and boxers rumpled and so  _Cas_ looking Dean aches.

"I l-" his fingernails dig into the palms of his hands, "-like your socks." He finishes around a wince. 

The minute up-quirk of Cas’ lips is almost too much, and accompanied by his quiet, pleased, “Thank you,” Dean nearly vomits fireballs he feels so warm

 _Fuck_.

* * *

**Part 2:**

They’re out in the garden. Yes, that’s right, Castiel has started a garden. Says it makes him feel close to God. Why the guy wants to feel close to his dead beat dad, Dean will never know. But they eat fresh fruits and vegetables a lot now (Dean only by force), and it seems to make Castiel happy so, there’s a garden.

Castie’s hands are covered with earth, wet, and deep brown, and smelling like something familiar. Something like home. It’s caked in the crevices, and lines his fingernails, and it makes his hands look  _used_.  _Purposeful_.  

Those hands have done a lot of celestial things in their day, healed people, killed things, and now they garden.

Dean never realized how gorgeous those hands are. Not when it mattered anyway, not when there were two slender fingers swiping across his forehead, or a warm palm cupping the side of his battered face. 

But now. Encased in soil, and plucking weeds from the vegetable beds, and pushing seeds into the ground. Now he notices. 

He notices and he falls. 

"Cas, I love-"

Cas pauses, the eerily bright blue of his eyes peeking from beneath the dark fringe of his lashes. 

"I love your garden." Dean chokes. 

Castiel smiles. It’s small, but it reaches his eyes, and it’s the Most Important Thing. “It makes me very happy,” he says.

Dean nods. “Yeah,” he agrees cowardly, fondly, “yeah, I can tell.”

* * *

**Part 3:**

They’re dangling off his tongue again, those three little words; the three most terrifying words in the entire English language. It’s getting harder and harder to hang on to them, to keep them imprisoned.

They nearly trip right past his teeth as he stands in the kitchen, observing a very frost bitten Castiel. 

He’s just come in from outside, old trench coat hanging precariously off of one shoulder (and dammit if Dean isn’t torn between reaching out and fixing it for the poor guy, or leaving it because it’s just so… ordinary where nothing about Cas ever has been), and a crate full of freshly picked vegetables under one arm. 

His cheeks are red. His goddamn nose is red. His lips are chapped, the wind has certainly done a number on his hair - like it misses him flying through its currents and can’t help but reach out and comb through the dark tendrils anyway - and he looks  _perfect_. 

"Here, let me help," Dean says, because it isn’t want he wants to say, and that is Dean Winchester’s mantra: repress. 

"Oh, thank you." Castiel allows the crate to be tugged from his grasp and he stands watching Dean slide it onto the counter. 

He doesn’t fix the coat.

Neither does Dean.

* * *

**Part 4:**

"I l… I like the way you make toast."

"I love- the book you suggested."

"I lo… lost my car keys, have you seen them?"

_I lo-_

The death count of missed opportunities is climbing. 

No. Not missed. Squashed.  _Obliterated_. Burnt to a crisp and scattered; the ashy remains of What Could Have Been. 

Even some of the more gruesome salt and burns Dean’s seen in his lifetime have had a better chance of surviving Dean’s hand than the opportunities he’s been given.

In fact, a good ole’ salt and burn sounds awesome right now. Just him, an unsettled ghost, a gallon of gasoline, and his trusty lighter. No Dean stretched out on Castiel’s bed with his head pillowed in his arms and his brain flirting with the idea of sleep, not because he’s particularly tired, but because he just feels that damn comfortable around Cas. 

No Cas sitting beside him in ratty plaid pajama bottoms and one of Dean’s old band tees, legs folded in front of him like a pretzel. Tome on his lap, brow furrowed as he translates. His rosemary and thyme shampoo permeating the air. 

Yeah, rosemary. And  _thyme_. The guy spent forty-five minutes sniffing shampoos at the grocery store before finally tossing the most expensive one into the cart.  _It smells nice_ , he’d said. 

$12.00 that  _nice_  smelling shampoo had cost Dean.

And he hasn’t quit buying it since.

None of that. And no words Dean can’t seem to get out cranking through his head like they’re trying to produce a fountain of Unspoken Affirmations. 

Just the smell of old melting bones, and the bright flicker of flames in a shallow grave, burning against the darkness. 

"Cas I-"

* * *

**Part 5:**

Castiel walks in with grocery bag laden arms. His brow is pulled in concentration, like he’s still trying to account for everything he was sent for. 

Dean watches carefully. It’s the first time Cas has gone on a supply run alone since falling.

Castiel sets the bags down on the counter, surveys them all, and nods. Approval, self-reassurance, Dean isn’t sure. But it’s pretty damn adorable.

Sam’s standing across the room, half a sandwich in his mouth, and a hint of a proud smile on his face, like Cas making it to the grocery store and back is one of his biggest accomplishments.

Dean riffles through the bags. 

Chicken pot pies, beer, eggs,  bananas, pie…

Dean’s chest feels too full, and the ground feels too far away. No one ever gets the pie unless Dean gets it himself. No one but- ”Cas, you remembered the pie. God,  _I love you_.”

"What?" Sam’s voice is suddenly very loud, and Dean’s face is suddenly very hot, and why is the room spinning?

"What?" Castiel asks too because why the hell not.

Dean swallows, tries to get the words back, bury them in his rib cage where they’ve been blooming for days now, weeks, months, … _years_. He tries, but they’re already gone. Floating out in the great wide space of Spoken, and is the bunker swaying or is that just Dean?

"What?" Dean says, third time’s the charm after all. 

Castiel’s staring at Dean, boring a hole in Dean’s face. Have his eyes always been that blue? That wide, that everything? “You said you-“ 

"I didn’t mean-"

"You didn’t mean it?" Sam asks, and doesn’t he have another half of a sandwich to inhale? 

Hurt brushes over Castiel’s face sending Dean’s heart plummeting to the ground. 

"That’s not what I was going to say!" Dean barks. 

"Then what?" Castiel urges, looking too close and too far away all at once. 

"I didn’t- I mean I do, but I- That wasn’t-"

"Dean?" It’s soft. Tentative. Pleading. It slams like a boulder against a dam, smashing everything in it’s direct path, water gushing out, flooding through the cracks, wiping everything away but the sound of Dean’s name in Castiel’s mouth.  

"Cas, I love you man." Dean finally blurts. "I- I- I love your bumblebee socks, and your old fucking trenchcoat falling off your shoulder, I love your expensive shampoo, and your stupid eyes that are so fucking-" Dean rakes a hand through his hair, trying to breathe, failing, looking anywhere but at Sam who’s gone strikingly quiet in the corner. 

I'm

"You…" Cas’ eyes are so damn big Dean could drown in them, fuck he  _is_  drowning in them. 

He breathes out a shaky laugh. ”Yeah.” He confirms.

"Since-"

"Forever," Dean answers. Because thinking back to a moment when he didn’t feel this way is impossible. The moment doesn’t exist. 

Since a rickety old barn in Pontiac. Since stabbing a holy tax account right in the chest. Since confessions on a park bench, and protective sigils carved into ribs. Since sacrifice, and death, and curses, and walls. Since purgatory and prayers. Since hell. Since redemption, forgiveness, promises. 

Since being gripped tight. 

"Forever," Dean says again, just to make sure it’s clear. He may not have known then, but he knows now. 

The kitchen falls silent, Sam staring at Dean staring at Cas staring at Dean. 

"You…" Castiel repeats, and dammit aren’t they a pair, the guy allergic to feelings and the oblivious fallen angel.

"Yeah, Cas. I do." Dean’s heart is pounding in his chest, like one too many espresso shots sent straight to his feelings.

Somehow they’re standing across the room from each other, and then Dean has his arms full of Cas, those perfect fingers sliding across his cheeks, eyes so big and blue, peeling back every single layer Dean Winchester has, breaking down walls, shattering insecurities. 

Castiel’s voice comes out thick, rough, like pushing the words out are his mouth’s only purpose. “ _Olani hoath ol_.”*

Dean doesn’t understand, doesn’t  _need_ to understand, because somewhere, deep in the very confines of his heart he  _knows_. He knows the cadence of that phrase, can feel it in his bones like it’s always been there and he’s just not ever dug deep enough to find it.

 _Olani hoath ol._  

_I love you._

"Is the Big Guy Upstairs gonna kick my ass for kissing you?" Dean asks, even though his mouth is already nearly on Cas’.

"Somehow I think he’d approve." The words are murmured, breath ghosting out across Dean’s lips, and when there’s finally no space between them, when Dean finally feels like one of his missing pieces has been slid into place, everything but Cas turns to white noise, dust motes floating in their little pillar of light.

After years of skirting around What If’s and Maybe’s, after endless amounts of Could’s and Would’s and Should’s, Dean says the words again, like they don’t’ even belong to him, like they’ve been Cas’ all along.

"I love you."

And all it took was somebody finally remembering the fucking pie.

 

**Author's Note:**

> *That was the most accurate translation I could find? Please forgive my inaccuracies.


End file.
